5 Cars In Pink Floyd Drummer Nick Mason's Collection That Prove He Has Great Taste
The real challenge is to not simply list every car in Nick Mason's collection, stand back and stare slack-jawed at it all. Every car is special, they all have stories to tell and they are all incredibly valuable. So much so that, according to fellow musician and car fan Brian Johnson of AC/DC, Mason's collection is worth as much as his earnings from Pink Floyd.
The star of the show — and responsible for a considerable chunk of that value — is Mason's Ferrari 250 GTO, bought in 1977 for just £35,000 and now likely worth over £50m($62m). Besides that, Mason's collection consists almost entirely of older, analog supercars and racing cars, while a blue LaFerrari stands alone as the only contemporary hypercar. Known as the Ten-Tenths collections, his garage is home to a set of three pre-war Aston Martin Ulsters, a Jaguar D-Type from the mid-50s, a pair of Bugatti Type 35s, a Ferrari F40, a Maserati 250F and a Panhard 5-liter from 1901. Then there's the racing Ferrari Daytona Competizione, a Porsche 962, an ex-Gilles Villeneuve Ferrari 312T3 Formula One car, and a BRM V16 racer from 1953.
The collection — once described by Mason as "a curious muddle of cars" — has also featured a Ferrari Enzo that was loaned to TopGear when the manufacturer refused to provide one itself, an Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione and a Ferrari 512 S used in the Steve McQueen movie Le Mans.
McLaren F1 GTR
Even one of Mason's youngest cars is now over 25 years old. Chassis number 10R, this particular McLaren F1 was the company's press and development car and appeared during official testing at the 1996 24 hours of Le Mans. It was later sold by McLaren to Mason, who had the race car made street-legal by UK-based McLaren specialists Lanzante. The car, which wears the registration plate K40 MCL, is used regularly and was infamously crashed by Mason at the 2017 Goodwood Members' Meeting, before being repaired and reappearing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2022.
The brainchild of Gordon Murray and intended to be the greatest-ever road car, the McLaren F1 is a three-seat supercar where the driver sits in the middle, flanked by a pair of passengers seated slightly behind.
Weighing just 2,500 lbs, the F1 is powered by a 6.1-liter engine built by BMW. Priced at roughly $1m when new, McLaren F1s are now worth in the region of $20m. The F1 still holds the record for the fastest naturally-aspirated production car, at 240 mph, and won the 24 hours of Le Mans at its first attempt in 1995.
Just 106 McLaren F1s were built, of which 28 are GTR-spec racers like the one owned by the Pink Floyd drummer. Of those just nine left the factory in the 1996 spec of Mason's, making it an exceptionally rare car. This one being street-legal makes it even rarer still.
Bugatti Type 35B
The Bugatti Type 35 is one of the most successful racing cars of all time, recording over 2,000 victories between 1924 and 1930. An open-topped Grand Prix racer from the days before Formula One, the Type 35 was powered by an eight-cylinder engine that began life with a capacity of two liters before growing to 2.3 liters for the Type 35B.
Its power output also grew over the course of its life, from an initial 95 horsepower to almost 140 hp, which was enough for a top speed in excess of 134 mph, says Bugatti.
With the Type 35, company founder Ettore Bugatti sought to produce a race car that was as light as possible, not just one with a powerful engine. It was the first car to feature smooth-running wheels that helped to reduce unsprung mass and therefore improve the responsiveness of the suspension. The cast aluminum wheels with their distinctive flat, ribbon-style spokes were also unique to the Type 35 and later 35B.
Mason bought his Bugatti in the 1970s, rebuilt it, and raced it through the following decade. As with his other classics, the blue Type 35B is a regular at events like the Goodwood Revival.
Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage
Built in 1959 and the last of six Tipo 61 Birdcage race cars built by Maserati, Mason's car began life in North America before coming to the UK. After the success of the factory-run 250F Grand Prix car (one of which Mason also owns), cash-strapped Maserati turned its attention to sports cars it could sell to other teams.
The car gets its nickname from how it uses an evolution of the tubular steel space frame chassis seen in other sports racing cars of the time, comprising 200 tubes of various sizes. When tested by Sir Stirling Moss, the Maserati broke the Nurburgring lap record during its first visit, says race driver Mario Franchitti in this 2017 video featuring Mason's own Birdcage.
Initially called the Tipo 60 and equipped with a 2.5-liter engine, the car evolved into the Tipo 61 with its more powerful 3.0-liter motor producing 250 hp. It won its first race, at Rouen in France in 1959.
Mason previously also owned a Tipo 60, with which he won a Formula One support race at Silverstone in 1993, says Franchitti, adding: "It was a last-lap pass around the outside. That's his favorite memory of racing, and this is a man that's done Le Mans five times."
Aston Martin Ulster
The pre-war Aston Martin Ulster dates from an era long before the DB-branded grand tourers favored by James Bond and Paul McCartney when the British car company only produced racing cars to compete in events like Le Mans.
Only 21 examples of Ulster were built between 1934 and 1936, of which just seven raced as works cars badged LM. Of those seven, Nick Mason owns two and his daughter Chloe owns a third; more specifically, the Mason household has held the keys to chassis numbers LM17, LM18 and LM2 since 1973. Two of these cars took part in a rainy test session in March this year, in preparation for competing at the annual Goodwood Members' Meeting.
Powered by a small, 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine producing 86hp, the Aston Martin Ulster LM doesn't sound like much by today's standards, but for 1935 a 100+ mph race car was mightily impressive. Also showing the car's age is its central throttle pedal, sat between the brake and clutch like that of a Bentley 'Birkin' Blower, and reversed H-gate shifter where the gear layout is a mirror image of today's setup. As for value, it was claimed in 2019 that an LM is worth in the region of £2.5m ($3m).
Ferrari 250 GTO
Nick Mason's Ferrari 250 GTO might just be the greatest (or luckiest) automotive investment of all time. He bought the car for just £35,000 in 1977, back when the GTO was considered to be little more than an outdated race car and no longer competitive. Although laughable today, Mason said he felt "stupid" for spending the equivalent of about £280,000 or $350,000 in today's money. Despite its soaring value — a similar GTO sold in 2018 for north of $70m — Mason continues to use his regularly.
Speaking of the car in 2014, Mason said: "I've done rallies, races, school runs, church wedding trips (both daughters) and there's space for some luggage. It doesn't overheat and I've yet to meet a professional driver who hasn't been charmed by it."
Built in 1962, according to Barchetta.cc, the Pink Floyd drummer's GTO began life as a race car owned by the Belgium Ecurie Francorchamps team, with whom it finished third overall and second in class at that year's 24 hours of Le Mans. It then finished third at that year's Tour de France, before scoring several victories in races and hill climbs through 1963 and 1964. The car passed through four different owners in the UK before joining Mason's collection and since then it has become a regular at the Goodwood Revival and Festival of Speed and attended several anniversary tours organized by fellow 250 GTO owners.
The cherry on top is the Ferrari's British license plate, which simply reads '250 GTO'.